CLASH OF THE MOVIE MONSTERS (Imperial Toys, 1987)

 

In a sense, this landed in exactly the right month of the year, but like I repeat on this blog all the time--and like I tell people all the time: monsters are for every day.

Here we have a mega-rare boxed set of action figures made by Imperial Toys, where they cleverly took four of their existing products and combined them into a new one.  Obviously, the biggest rarity here is the box itself, so let's look at that first...and it does NOT disappoint.  There's a lot to unpack here:

First, let's enjoy the front of the box, where Frankenstein's monster grapples with Count Dracula, while in the background, Godzilla and King Kong rampage.  Don't miss the middle, however, where a damsel in distress is tied to a phone booth.  Yes, the outside of the phone booth.  It's amazing.

"Right away," you are thinking, "we have a scale problem." And they do their best to hide it in the photo here, but we will return to that in a moment.  Of course, if we are being fair, these figures were meant for kids to bury in the sandbox and take on all kinds of rough and tumble adventures, rather than to be displayed as works of art. S.H. Monsterarts they aren't.

I'll get emotional if we dwell on this price tag too long...but you got all four for NINE BUCKS?!?!

One more photo before we dive in.  Are you noticing any discrepancies?

Before we go any further, I'm not looking at the Godzilla alone because we have covered this figure thoroughly.  To see everything you wanted to know about the 6-inch Imperial Godzilla figure, go to this post!

Frankenstein('s monster) is a big lug, nearly 8 inches tall, with arms that can reach his kneecaps, ending in huge, red-veined hands.  

He, like everyone else, is solid and has a chunky, substantial feel.  Also, he just wants to be loved.

King Kong is, really, perfectly done.  He has a real presence about him and looks a lot like the original in the face.  I know later, in the 1990's, Imperial made a version of this figure with a red button on his chest, allowing for roaring and snorting, and the green eyes lighting up! It was cool.

Dracula is, oddly, the biggest of the lot, at a full 8 inches tall (remember, these guys were originally made separately from each other), and is also the heaviest, because the cape is solidly and thickly molded contiguous with the body as one piece.  This can make standing very difficult.  The main problem with him (besides the likeness, but nobody could legally use Lugosi's face back then) is his arms.  They move up--in a permanent "I'm playing the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" pose--but not down, again because of the cape.  It's frustrating.

Okay, now we are back to the interesting size problem...which bothered no kid ever, of course. The Godzilla figure was first made in 1985 (I think the others figures are dated 1986, but Kong has no date at all I believe), so they were obviously never meant to really go together.  All of these figures were sold loose as well as carded versions--for the Godzilla, the carded version came later, in 1992 to be precise, so maybe that's true for the others, too. Here they are all together:

When everyone's in a line-up, it's pretty telling, but like I said, this would've stopped no kid ever from playing with these, and that's because these guys are nothing short of awesome.  Their chunkiness gives them charm to us, now, but held up to rugged play, back then. 

You may also be thinking: "How in the world do all of those guys fit into that small box?"  And the answer is....just barely!

Countdown to Halloween 2024 (week 2)!

Something a little different this week, because these discs go together, but were probably sold separately, who knows...

Anybody remember LASERLIGHT, the budget label that released, well, whatever they could get their hands on?  I first encountered them as a young CD collector. I think they were the first "bins full of cheap CDs" that I ever ran into.  Mostly Classical at that time, though. It was a huge deal to find $3 CDs when they were all twenty bucks or more.

This is a helping of Halloween cheese put out by them in 1999-2000, but in excellent packaging.  The covers were shiny foil printed on heavy stock, and each disc's inlay and spine were a different bright highlighter color--this made for a nice asthetic, but is impossible to scan for some reason.

You get a little of everything--two discs of movie themes, a disc of original music, and a disc of scary stories:

I will admit I haven't even finished going through them yet, which I will rectify, and here we are already at Week 2! Enjoy!

LINK: Spooky Month 2024 Countdown (Week 2)

Countdown to Halloween 2024 (week 1)!

 

To start us off, here's a scan of a Citrus Hill Orange Juice reflective patch (really more of a sticker) from 1982, to slap on the backs of your young trick-or-treaters! I recently found this unused inside of a book that I purchased!!!

Well, it's already that time of year again, and nobody's happier than me.  And this year we get five weeks of October, so get ready for an onslaught of Halloween goodness. Someday we really will run out...but, not today:

Arch Oboler - Drop Dead! An Exercise In Horror (1962)

This one is a real treat.  Oboler was a writer of many types of things, but is best known for his run on the LIGHTS OUT horror radio show.  These vignettes examining different types of horror are incredibly well done, and a couple are downright terrifying.  If you grew up hearing Bill Cosby's routine about being scared to death as a child by a radio story about a giant chicken heart (which was a LIGHTS OUT episode by the way), it's here! Don't miss this one.

Monster Mash EP (Peter Pan Records, no date)

And there there's this rarity.  We begin with possibly the worst cover of "Monster Mash" you've heard in a long time, and then conclude with three random tracks from Frankie Stein albums (which were on Power Records anyway, which was joined at the hip to Peter Pan, so maybe it's not so weird after all).

The Sounds Of Halloween (Hallmark, 1986)

As Halloween sound effects records are so common, we are going to divide them up like we did last year, so there's not an entire week of only sound effects records.  This one is dear to me because I owned it as a kid.  It is one side sound effects, and one side sound-alike covers of Halloween songs.  Is "Purple People Eater" even remotely a Halloween song? I think that's stretching.

LINK: Spooky Month 2024 Countdown (Week 1)

Don't forget that previous years of Spooky Month downloads are still....undead on this very blog, as well as several other related items!

Trendmasters 1996 Catalog, Price List & Sales Letter!

 

Today we will look at a motherlode of history from the once-mighty Trendmasters, who holds such a large and important place in Godzilla history, they get their own volume in our series of Godzilla guides.

First off, we will look at the Trendmasters dealer catalog for 1996. This hefty book is printed on very thick, glossy paper, and looks like a million bucks.  It's squarebound and glued, and will not allow me to scan the pages without destroying the book, so I'll do my best to get decent photos as we go through it.

Upon opening it, you can see all of the different product lines that Trendmasters was making that year, including Independence Day, Tarzan, and Gumby!

Oh, and the incredible GODZILLA WARS line as well (sequel to their extensive KING OF THE MONSTERS line).  Each section of the catalog begins with a really cool vellum page, which has its own artwork on it, combining transparently with the page below, to produce a very lavish and downright swanky effect.  Like this:

Here, the awesome GODZILLA WARS logo artwork of Godzilla & Spacegodzilla shows through to the page below, which is a close-up of the Power-Up Mechagodzilla's Gun Arm (below). Kudos to the art designer for this book. What could've been boring squares on the page, showing product, is instead a joy to look at.

You'll notice there are crystals everywhere, further developing the Spacegodzilla theme--and the film was a complete unknown in the USA at the time!

And now, on to the 10-inch giant action figures.  One thing of interest about this catalog is that it lists several items that never ended up being produced.  For example, there were only 6 giant action figures sold in the GODZILLA WARS packaging, and Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Rodan were never sold that way!

The next two pages show off the new Power-Up figures, which were super-cool kaiju with added armor and firing missiles.....Godzilla wearing armor? Sign me up.

Next we have the "6-inch" action figures, either boxed with sound, or carded without.  There are lots of discrepancies here, too.  There were 13 boxed figures with sound produced, and 11 carded without sound. I always love seeing the paint job on the prototype Biollante, which is awesome. Former Trendmasters designer Jeff Bergeron told me that he thought Toho would be mad that he added feet to Biollante, but they didn't say anything! Which is awesome, because they are RAD.

The "Godzilla 2-Pack"s (or as the figures' card ended up saying, "2 in 1 Battle Collectors Edition 2-Packs") are a difficult subject, because the later ones in this group ended up being farmed out to discount stores, which were a pretty new concept at the time, and most people couldn't find them.  All in all, there were a whopping 11 produced, and some contained unique Godzilla sculpts--and therefore unique trading cards--which are the very rarest of the Godzilla Trendmasters trading cards. The unique sculpts are shown here on these pages.

The next two pages show us even more rarities.  The "Micro Mountain Figures" were similar to the "Hatched" series, and instead of an egg, a "Mountain Case" was included (a similar thing was done in the Tarzan line at the time).  I haven't yet solved the mystery of why these figures are uber-rare, but they certainly are.  Six were made, and the catalog lists some that weren't:  Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Rodan. The Godzilla Bendables line was brought forward from KING OF THE MONSTERS, and are also very hard to find.  The catalog also lists 9 figures being made, and there are 6 by my count.

One of the crown jewels of a line full of treasures are the Micro Battle Playsets.  New for 1996 were the Biollante in Washington, D.C., Mecha-King Ghidorah Central Command, Mecha-Godzilla Defense Base, and the infamously rare Spacegodzilla in Tokyo. If you want to see in-depth reviews of loose examples, there is such a series of  articles on this very blog!

Another masterpiece is the "Godzilla Destroys N.Y. Giant Playset," which is also reviewed on this site in great detail. Strangely, it wasn't sold in GODZILLA WARS packaging that I have ever seen.  Likewise, there was no Spacegodzilla in the line of Giant Walking figures (although Bandai made one in Japan).

The back page of the GODZILLA WARS section shows some examples of packaging for the line.

But, we aren't quite done yet! Inside of the catalog was a sheaf of papers, which turned out to be a sales letter, as well as a price list for all of the toy lines in the catalog! 

And here you have it, a genuine sales letter, on real Trendmasters stationery! I guess lots of folks wouldn't think papers like this were too exciting, but they are pure gold to me! (Come to think of it, I guess we even know who owned this material before me, since we have a letter made out to them!) So what did GODZILLA WARS items cost the retailer in 1996?

Like the catalog, I am only featuring the Godzilla-related pages here.  This first page is for foreign-shipped orders (note the "FOB Hong Kong") in the letter, meaning the buyer had to be responsible for shipping from there.  The "L/C" means "Letter of Credit," which is commonly needed in placing overseas orders.  

And here is the page for what was available in the United States--note that the "Novelties" section is the main difference here.  Also note that there is a "PLUSH" category, for even more items that did not end up being produced: a series of animated plushes (which, interestingly enough, are not featured in the 1996 catalog):

I hope you have enjoyed examining this piece of Godzilla history with me.  I am currently updating the Trendmasters Volume of our Godzilla Guides, so keep an eye out for that in the near future (the link will be the same)!

Video Game Board Games [part 3]: Q*BERT (Parker Brothers, 1983)

 

You have to admit, Q*BERT was one of the most unique video games invented during the Golden Age of arcade games, and it was an extremely popular one.  The little potty-mouthed guy was a hit with fans, too.  The game spawned sequels, and he even starred in his own cartoon as part of SATURDAY SUPERCADE for two seasons.

But can a board game replicate the gameplay of such an unusual design?

Initial set-up (note that some of the bad guys should be at the top, since they travel top to bottom).

Actually, yes! This is accomplished by taking turns (and needing two players), and having Player 1 be Q*Bert the first time, while Player 2 is the (what the instructions call) "Nasty" guys, and then vice-versa.

Q*Bert and his "nasty" enemies!

Another unique feature to the board game was the inclusion of special dice, and a rolling tube to keep Q*Bert's number secret until after your turn.

Also, the "nasty" (I keep thinking of Janet Jackson every time I type that) characters all move in different ways, just like the actual game. There are even flying discs to take Q*Bert back to the top of the pyramid.

Overall review: As I said, the game does its darndest to bring the specific mechanics of playing Q*Bert into your own home, as a board game.  This of course is not without some negatives:

1) No matter how successful you are at mimicking the actual actions of a video game, it is a much slower process when played as a board game, and kids (or excitable adults) can notice this...and they should probably just go play Q*BERT and get it out of their systems.

2) It's an oddly-shaped game (large and square), and doesn't stack or store well (hence my copy).  Pieces mostly fit into the tray, but the "rolling tube" needs to be disassembled every time and unfolded to actually store it. This leads to them wearing out and the tabs tearing over time. Also, since the game doesn't require a traditional flat board, and must be played in the box, if yours gets crushed, it will really screw up your experience.

3) This is a standard complaint with these (or any board games really), but if you lose enough of the special pegs, you won't be able to play the game correctly.  But this is true for all of the parts.

Once again, here are the (very detailed) instructions for the game, just in case anyone has lost theirs:

Stay tuned for another Video Game Board Game in the near future...